The Last Temple (19 page)

As the six men on horses passed a soldiers’ camp, one man yelled from the darkness, loud enough to reach Vitas. “Look, someone is out to chase the emperor!”

Another soldier called out, “What’s the latest news? Is he dead yet?”

A minute later, when Vitas passed as a lone horseman, he heard the same question again from men standing beside a fire. They were passing drinks back and forth, celebrating. Undoubtedly, when Galba finally arrived in Rome, they expected him to follow tradition and give them a fine reward for swearing loyalty to him.

Vitas wondered if Nero, for the first time in his life, understood the gut-clenching fear he’d so callously inflicted on thousands and thousands, often for no other reason than a whim. Thinking of this gave Vitas a cold satisfaction. It occurred to him that perhaps the real reason he hadn’t stepped out and attacked Nero with the sword was because the longer Nero lived, the longer Nero would endure terror.

Ahead, one of the servants fell off the back of his horse.

Nero cursed at the man. “Stay with us!”

The servant found his feet and hobbled along, pathetically trying to keep pace.

It forced Vitas to drop back slightly, and he kept the increased distance between them for the next couple of miles, which passed without incident except for the growing pressure as the storm regathered.

As the procession neared Phaon’s villa, Vitas began to worry that Nero would make it inside the estate too soon. Vitas was almost at the point of urging his horse forward when he heard hooves on the cobblestones, coming toward him.

Had Nero changed his mind?

Vitas slipped off his horse and drew it to the side of the road, hoping lightning wouldn’t expose him.

It was a needless worry.

The horses were all riderless.

Nero and his servants and Sporus must have dismounted. The horses would have been nervous because of the storm and simply wanted to return to the stables.

Vitas began to run down the road.

When he reached the lane to Phaon’s villa, he turned without hesitation but then stopped short at seeing six figures on the lane. He darted behind a tree and watched to see if he’d been noticed. Nothing in the movement of the six men indicated they knew he was following.

Again, he felt grim satisfaction.

The man who had held the fates of millions of men in the empire, who had been served by tens of thousands of warriors, had been reduced to four servants and a slave boy.

Vitas trotted forward down the lane, ready to freeze if any turned.

They did, but not in the direction he expected.

“Here!” one of the four said.

“Phaon, I can’t,” Nero replied. “It’s nothing but a hole between briars.”

“We have to hide,” Phaon replied. “None of my own servants can know you are here. This path will take us to the rear of the house.”

“Then spread your cloaks,” Nero said. “I will not dirty my feet.”

The image that Vitas had conjured of a terrified man immediately disappeared. Nero still had his haughtiness, and Vitas felt his rage rising again. He put a hand on the hilt of his sword and eased forward.

Now he only had to give them a ten-yard lead down the path to stay out of sight. Phaon’s insistence that none of his servants could know of Nero’s presence indicated there was no gathering of men still loyal to Nero. It meant Vitas could have attacked immediately, bringing Nero’s body back to Nerva for the reward that most surely had been placed on Nero’s head. But that would have been too merciful a death for the tyrant, and now Vitas stayed his sword not because of an obligation to Vespasian or Titus, but because he wanted to watch Nero suffer in the way he’d imagined earlier that Nero was suffering.

Vitas remained far enough back that he was confident none of the men ahead could hear him above their own noisy progress, yet close enough to clearly hear conversation.

The men had stopped at the edge of a pool.

“There is a gravel pit just beyond the water,” Phaon said. “You could lie low there while I prepare the house. I’m expecting a letter with news from the Senate.”

“I refuse to hide in a pit before I die,” Nero snarled.

“Then I will clear the entrance to a tunnel that goes beneath the wall to my villa.” Phaon ran ahead.

Nero knelt beside the water and spoke bitterly as he scooped it into his hands. “This is Nero’s own special brew.”

He gulped at the water, then busied himself with his cloak. It took Vitas several moments to realize that Nero was plucking thorns, cursing at the small pinpricks he must have felt as he struggled in the darkness.

Moments later, Phaon returned and gestured them toward the entrance.

Vitas waited until he no longer heard their voices, then crawled through the same tunnel.

Rising from the tunnel on the other side of the wall, Vitas kept his hand on the hilt of his sword. He didn’t fear Nero or any of his men, but he was wary of bodyguards that Phaon must surely keep at his villa.

He realized shortly, however, another benefit of Phaon’s secrecy. By not announcing his arrival in advance, Phaon had no one stationed at the rear of the estate to guard him.

Vitas didn’t have to move far to find Nero and the servants. They had stopped at the first room, and only a few feet outside, he heard Nero complain, “Look at this poor mattress! And we have nothing better than this coarse bread? I’ll have none of it.”

“We can’t stay here,” Sporus said. “This must not be your fate, to die in such a pitiful room, wearing an old cape.”

Nero’s voice cracked. “If I am found and killed, we need a grave. Dig one outside that will fit my body. Look for pieces of marble to decorate it.”

There was murmured agreement inside the room, and Vitas made his decision. He would let the servants go forth as ordered, then capture Nero at sword point. This would ensure the man would not be killed by anyone else but reach the Senate alive and face their decision.

“Dead,” Nero said, now crying. “And so great an artist!”

Vitas moved back some, ducking into an alcove as he waited for the servants to leave. Before that could happen, however, he heard the slap of sandals somewhere down the corridor. From his hiding spot, he watched as a runner passed him and disappeared into the room.

“A note from Phaon,” came the words from inside.

This was significant. Phaon had left them and sent a messenger rather than meeting Nero in person. Phaon had washed his hands of Nero.

“What is it!” Nero said sharply. “Give it to me.”

A pause. Then a sob. “I have been declared a public enemy by the Senate and will be punished in ancient style when arrested.”

The response to Nero’s statement was silence. Vitas imagined Nero looking from the face of one man to another, gauging their reactions.

It was Nero who broke the silence. “Tell me, I demand—what is the ancient style of punishment?”

A shaky voice answered him. “Executioners strip the victim naked in a public place and put his head in a wooden fork so he cannot move. Then he is flogged to death with rods.”

Nero began to wail. “No! No! That cannot be my final hour! Suicide! That is my only option. Where are my daggers?”

Again silence. Again broken by Nero. “These points are dull!”

Vitas heard the clanging of metal against stone, as if Nero had thrown them down.

“Weep for me, Sporus. Mourn for me!” Nero continued, barely understandable above his own wailing. “And you others. One of you must set an example for me by committing suicide first. Please! No, I’m not begging—I’m commanding. Who shall it be?”

In the next silence, Vitas again imagined each of the men looking at the others, none willing to die for a man who was now a public enemy of Rome, no longer emperor.

And in that silence came another sound. At first, like thunder. But then, more recognizable as galloping cavalry.

“How ugly and vulgar my life has become,” Nero cried. Then in Greek, “This is certainly no credit to Nero. No credit at all. Come, pull yourself together.”

Vitas stood from his crouch in the alcove. Now was the time.

Just as he reached the room, Nero hissed, “Epaphroditus, help me with this.”

Vitas knew that name. It told him one of the servants was Nero’s secretary.

Vitas turned the corner and saw in candlelight that Nero had a dagger to his throat and was attempting to push it in.

“Epaphroditus! Now, while I have courage!”

Later Vitas would wonder, had he reached Nero in time, would he have tried stopping the man?

But he wasn’t given the opportunity to choose.

The dagger plunged into Nero’s soft flesh, and he pulled it out and gazed, stupefied, at the blood. It gushed onto his cloak.

Vitas knelt beside Nero, and Nero’s eyes widened in recognition. But he was too weak to say anything.

He clutched at Vitas’s arm and tried to force him to stanch the wound with the edge of his cloak.

Nero muttered, “Too late. But, ah, what fidelity.”

Whether Nero meant the events of the evening or that seeing Vitas alive revealed that he’d been betrayed long before this evening, there would never be a certain answer.

Eyes bulging, Nero died.

Vitas stepped outside the room, raised his forearm against the wall, and leaned his head against his arm.

Rage and revenge had driven him for so long; now that Nero was gone, Vitas was spent, barely able to register the emotions that had drained him.

Before he could stop, choking sobs overwhelmed him.

He was free to go home again.

Two days later, in the middle of the afternoon, escorted by a servant, Vitas joined Ruso in the senator’s garden. The sky held wispy clouds, and the leaves of the trees moved with barely more than a rustle in the light breeze.

Ruso did not rise to greet Vitas but remained sitting with his right hand on a goblet filled with dark liquid.

The servant departed, and Vitas waited for Ruso to invite him to sit.

Ruso pointed at the nearest chair, about ten paces away.

“You behave like a worried man,” Vitas said, taking the chair. “First, your servants search me for weapons. And now you make sure to keep some distance between us.”

“I’m sure you’re not surprised at my precautions,” Ruso said. “Let’s not fool ourselves. I know why you arranged this appointment.”

“If we are not going to fool ourselves,” Vitas said, “then you tell me why I am here.”

“As judge and executioner.”

“Hardly.”

“You should not lie to yourself,” Ruso said. He lifted the goblet and smiled with false brightness. “Helius is in chains until Galba arrives, but he is permitted to receive visitors. He told me the scroll you carried the night of Nero’s death was blank. You knew already, then, not to trust me.”

“It was merely caution,” Vitas said. “But when Helius demanded that someone search me for the scroll, I knew. Only one person could have told him I would be carrying it with me that night. You. And in betraying me, you betrayed Vespasian and Titus.”

In saying this, Vitas shivered with a premonition. The letter of Revelation had predicted the Beast would reign for forty-two months against the followers of the Christos. It was eerie. Nero had died forty-two months after beginning the persecutions, ending the reign of the first beast. And if the reign of the second beast had begun with Rome’s entry into war against Judea, could Vitas believe that at the end of the second forty-two months, with the power that Vespasian and Titus held as commanders of the legions in Judea, they would become the ax of God’s destruction against the Jews?

He fought against the premonition and focused on the conversation. For there was no doubt Vespasian and Titus would ensure Ruso paid the price for choosing to side against them while pretending to support them.

“I was right, then, about the reason for your visit.” Ruso drank deeply from the goblet. He grimaced at the taste. “You are judge and executioner.”

“I will repeat myself. Hardly. I’m obliged to report what happened to Vespasian and Titus. Your fate, in that regard, is up to them.”

They both had no doubt of that fate. This was Rome. Losers in politics rarely survived.

“Why are you here?” Ruso asked.

“Naturally, they will be curious about your betrayal. Are there others among the group who helped you?”

“Where are your heated brands? If you are trying to unravel a conspiracy against the original conspirators, isn’t that the usual method?”

“Again, that decision is theirs, not mine.” Vitas stood. “Thank you for your time. A ship waits for me in Ostia. Jerome and his family will travel back to Alexandria with me. Rome is a dangerous place in these times.”

Ruso lost his composure, and his voice came out as a groan. “Wait.”

“Of course.” Vitas relaxed in the chair again.

“Does it help that I hate myself for it?”

“I am not your judge. Nor do I want to be.”

Ruso’s face contorted. “I had so little time to make my decision.”

He held the goblet up and examined it as if looking for cracks in the glaze. He set it down beside him and spoke earnestly. “Helius learned of your return and that you were here. All I can guess is that a servant overheard and betrayed me. Helius came to me and gave me a choice. I could face interrogation—those heated brands and the pincers and the whips—until I divulged the extent of the conspiracy, and then die in the arena. Or I could work for Helius and keep my life and my property and be rewarded with substantial gold from the treasury.”

Tremors went through Ruso’s body. “I wish I’d had your courage. When Nero demanded your wife as a partner, you decided to face death instead. Me, I agreed to what Helius wanted.”

“What did Helius ask you?” Vitas reminded himself that he wasn’t there to judge and didn’t want any introspection on the justifications Ruso used.

Ruso reached down and tapped his foot, a strange action that Vitas noted but chose not to express any curiosity about.

“First, the names of the conspirators. I told him I only knew two: Vespasian and Titus.”

At this, Vitas felt more of the cold anger that had driven him for the previous months. Ruso had betrayed Titus, knowing it put a death sentence not only on Titus, but probably Vespasian.

Ruso went on. “Helius wanted to use you to lure all the conspirators together. He thought he’d finally triumph and squash all of Nero’s enemies at once.”

“Did you tell Helius that Ben-Matthias predicted Vespasian would be an emperor?”

Ruso countered that with another question. “Does it matter? Galba is going to execute Helius.”

“Did you tell him?”

Ruso tapped one knee, then the other. He grimaced.

Peculiar,
Vitas thought, but he repeated his question. “Did you tell Helius?”

“No,” Ruso said. “Think of the situation. If Nero survived these revolts, his next target would have been Vespasian. And my treachery would have been exposed. I was trying to survive. I only gave Helius what he demanded, nothing more.”

“Hoping that if Nero did not survive, no one would know of your actions.”

Ruso shrugged. “Obviously, I’m not a man of honor. And all my life, I’d believed I was. Until I was tested.”

Vitas was simply not interested in the man’s self-pity. “What else did he want? You said first the names. What was second?”

“The scroll from the archives.”

Vitas reached inside his cloak and pulled out parchment, rolled into a tube. “This scroll?”

Ruso’s face arched with surprise. “You did have it!”

“Not until this morning,” Vitas said. “The night Helius searched me for it, it was still hidden somewhere in the archives. The only person who knew where to look was Leah. It was something she knew she must keep secret, and only after her release from the palace did she retrieve it.”

“Let me read it,” Ruso said.

Vitas laid the scroll casually in his lap. “The night I escaped from the arena, I was told this might someday save my family. If I’d found it sooner, that might have been the case. Though, in a way, it was an accurate prediction.”

“You didn’t find it until after Nero was dead,” Ruso said. “Ah, the irony. This is the scroll that drove Helius to desperation, and in the end, because of you, it didn’t make a difference.”

“To me it did,” Vitas answered. “Because of this scroll, I first suspected you. That suspicion kept me alive and set the bait that trapped Helius.”

“Indulge me then,” Ruso said. He pinched the tops of his thighs. “Explain how you suspected me because of that scroll. Time is getting shorter.”

“I began to wonder how you knew Helius wanted it so badly,” Vitas said. “And the only answer I could come up with was that you knew this from Helius himself.”

“Let me read the scroll, I beg of you. I’ve spent countless hours wondering why Helius was so afraid of it. What could it possibly contain that would have been dangerous to Nero?”

“Helius was afraid because Nero said he was god,” Vitas answered. “Because Nero used the followers of the Christos as a scapegoat for the great fire. Helius was terrified because this scroll gives the Christos a legitimacy in Rome that would hurt Nero badly. It is a scroll that would lend credence to John’s revelation as a divinely inspired prophecy. And if divinely inspired, the predictions about the death of the Beast would soon come to pass.”

“It gives the Christos a legitimacy in Rome? What is in it?” Ruso was so frustrated that he tried to push himself out of his chair. But strangely he fell backward. “Tell me!”

In that moment, Vitas understood why Ruso insisted his time was short. The man was slowly becoming paralyzed. The tapping of his feet and knees, the pinching of his thighs. Ruso had been evaluating the progress of the numbness that was creeping up his body.

“Hemlock?” Vitas asked Ruso, remembering how deeply Ruso had drunk from the goblet. Very soon, the poison would numb and paralyze the muscles that controlled Ruso’s breathing.

“What choice did I have?” he answered. “From prison, Helius has been blackmailing me to pay for food and other comforts. Any day he could let the world know of my treachery. And when you confirmed what I feared—that you already knew—it was a death sentence. I’m too cowardly to die by branding irons. Or tied in a sack with a badger and thrown in the Tiber.

“Please,” Ruso said. “What was on the scroll? Grant me that before I’m gone.”

“You once believed and followed the Christos,” Vitas said. “Wasn’t that why you wanted John spared?”

“I believed,” Ruso said. He was beginning to gasp. “Until my faith was tested. Until Helius threatened my life because of it. Now I have only shame.” Ruso’s mouth tightened. “The scroll!”

Vitas finally succumbed to emotion. Not the cold anger he’d arrived with. But pity.

He walked over and put the scroll in Ruso’s lap.

Ruso opened it with trembling hands.

Vitas watched Ruso’s eyes scan the contents. “This cannot be. Tiberius?”

Vitas nodded confirmation. Few emperors were as revered as Tiberius.

“Tiberius!” Ruso repeated.

Vitas understood Ruso’s surprise. He had reacted the same way himself upon reading the scroll.

Because of the miracles performed by the Christos and the tales of his resurrection that circulated through the empire, the great emperor Tiberius had gone to the Senate, asking the members to approve a decree that the Christos was divine. The Senate had refused to do as requested, and this once-minor Senate matter had been noted and archived.

But in light of the letter of the Revelation and how Nero would have reacted to any suggestion that the followers he persecuted had legitimacy to serve any other god but him, decades later this minor Senate matter would have been a major political blow.

“Had I but known,” Ruso said. He could hardly breathe. The potion of hemlock must have been barely diluted with wine.

In sudden rage and with the last of his strength, he ripped the parchment in half. Vitas took a step toward Ruso, but it was too late. With flashing hands, Ruso shredded the document and threw the pieces into the water beside him.

“In the end, I served the false god,” Ruso said. “Now I am finished.”

He tried gasping for more air, but his lungs were failing him. His face contorted with terror and his tongue fell from his mouth. Then, slowly, the light left his eyes.